Author and host of the hit OUTDOOR CHANNEL show SHOOTING GALLERY spouts off...

Saturday, November 05, 2011

Some Thoughts for Saturday Morning

I think everyone should read this brilliant analysis of the current "Occupy" fad by Victor Davis Hanson in PJ Media, titled "Playing With Fire:"

Occupy Wall Street follows three years of sloppy presidential name-calling — “millionaires and billionaires,” slurs about Las Vegas and the Super Bowl, profit-mad, limb-lopping doctors, introspection that now is not the time for profits and at some point we should cease making money, spread the wealth, punish our enemies, and all the old Obama boilerplate. Someone finally got the message about the evil 1%.

And so the cultural fabric, a fabric woven first by the Founder and made strong through the years of America, is stretched and twisted, perhaps beyond it's ability to recover. Playing at class warfare is like juggling grenades with the pins outs...sooner or later they all blow, and the consequences are greater than the juggler or the spectators ever imagined.

I'd also like to make a short comment on Paul Barrett's book, GLOCK: THE RISE OF AMERICA'S GUN, and why I have specifically chosen NOT to blurb the book, as author Barrett asked, to interview the author or do excerpts from the book, to use Mr. Barrett as an expert on any of my television products, or provide the author with any additional publicity opportunities.

I met Mr. Barrett at one of the National Shooting Sports Foundation media events I used to run back when he was working for the Wall Street Journal. He now works for the Bloomberg media operation, headed by Michael Bloomberg. He contacted me when the book was in manuscript form and asked if I would read the book and maybe provide a blurb for the back cover and/or subsequent publicity. After reading the manuscript, I decided not to be involved. Here's the thought behind my decision.

First and to be totally fair, Paul Barrett is both a fine reporter and a fine writer, an increasingly rare combination in these sunset days for the MSM. His story of Glock is fascinating reading.

HOWEVER, and this is one hell of a "however," the book, especially in its closing quarter, is laced throughout with Bloomberg's "Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG)" talking points. Mr. Barrett repeatedly quotes antigun sources uncritically and at length, including the widely discredited Tom Diaz from the execrable Violence Policy Center.

As a consequence, the tone of the book is violently anti-NRA...at one point Mr. Barrett notes quite casually that the NRA was actively engaged in pushing it's members to higher capacity handguns during the AWB years. Really? Sources? Or is that simply one of the many false "articles of faith" from VPC and MAIG?

I would say it's puzzling that a journalist of Mr. Barrett's caliber could so easily accept antigun dogma at face value. At one point Mr. Barrett expresses puzzlement that we gunowners could object to government-mandated magazine capacity laws. Had he spoken to any of us gunowners, we would have explained in simple, easy-to-understand-even-to-northeastern-liberals terms that if we accept the government's questionable "right" to mandate a firearm's ammunition capacity, then we by default accept the government's ability to set that number at "zero." In a world where the major federal law enforcement agencies and even the State Department can be recruited by the nation's top law enforcement officer, Eric Holder, for a complex, deadly and patently illegal scheme like "Fast and Furious" solely to create an environment for stripping us of our Second Amendment rights, the idea that the government would set firearms' capacity at "zero" isn't paranoia...it's a hard, cold reality.

Finally, Mr. Barrett works for Michael Bloomberg, whom Mr. Barrett described as an "really good boss." I describe Bloomberg as a blood enemy, a man who has already shown his willingness to break federal laws to do us -- the gun culture and the firearms industry -- harm. If you believe for a single second that Michael Bloomberg would have allowed one of his top employees to produce a book on guns that DID NOT benefit Bloomberg's stated antigun goals, I have a lovely bridge to sell you...

"I describe Bloomberg as a blood enemy, a man who has already shown his willingness to break federal laws to do us -- the gun culture and the firearms industry -- harm."

Can I humbly suggest that it is a good thing that Mike Bloomberg really hates all the gun culture. You see, Bloomberg had, and may still have, aspirations of being President of the USA. If he had NOT had this one obsession of his, he actually might have been able to fool enough of the American voting populace to have achieved his dream. But now the gun culture folks have realized that this RINO scumbag hates the "little people" just like Leona Helmsley. His is a world of dictates and demands of others, he is exempt from any rules. I suspect that there isn't a way he could become King at this time.

Bloomberg is the Valdamort/Dark Lord head of the anti-2nd Amendment crowd. With a resume like working for Bloomberg, I think you were generous to even read the manuscript in the first place. But, good you did since it has exposed the charade, potentially a trojan horse.. Now this needs to be broadcast across the gun world so no one mistakenly buys this rag. I wont be satisfied until it is on the 50 cent bargan rack at wally world or the burn pile at the transfer station....

Michael - I'm sorry you decided not to blurb the book, using pretty much what you said above re: the VPC-MAIG-Justice deceptions.

If you are able to see Mr. Barrett as a good journalist, then I suspect that his perception problems arise from chronic exposure to Sepsis NewYorkae, a deadly condition which poisons the brain and makes it incapable of discerning any intellectual concept which might emanate from anywhere west of the Hudson River.

"we would have explained in simple, easy-to-understand-even-to-northeastern-liberals terms"

Should just leave it at "liberal".It doesn't get any more "Northeast" than Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, and no one has less restrictive gun laws than we do.As for comparing Bloomberg to Leona Helmsly that is not fair at all.Leona doesn't give a crap what the rest of us do as long as we don't bother her.Bloomy on the other hand even wants to regulate what we are allowed to eat.Tom Bogan

with the others, i thank you for probably saving me some time and money, neither of which i can afford to waste at my present age, three quarters of a cenury. hearing that bloomberg signs barrett's paycheque is all the clue i need to consign this book o the trash heap, along wih micheal bellisle's late, unlamented effort.

Michael -- Thanks for the kind words about my reporting and writing talents. I think we both know that you have mischaracterized my book by suggesting that it is some sort of brief for Michael Bloomberg's gun control agenda. Bloomberg is a good boss, and he does run an excellent business magazine, for which I'm proud to work. But that's neither here nor there. The book is mine, and it is primarily a narrative history of the Glock. One of my main themes, which you fail to even note in your guilt-by-association screed, is that the Glock has benefited time and again when efforts to restrict it have backfired. I'm disappointed that you gave this one-sided and misleading account of my book. -- Paul Barrett

Paul -- hopefully your book will turn out to be a complete failure as I suspect. It is apparent that you have chosen a popular gun manufacturer to use as a front to spread your hate for the 2nd Ammendment.

Mike, I love ya, but your take on Barrett’s book is totally off base. You did mischaracterize his work. I can understand taking a polite pass on “blurbing” his book, but your write up is just another example of the intolerant attitudes so many people in the gun community have when anyone in the mainstream media (Decidedly not Paladin Press) writes a book on guns that does not fall lockstep into the orthodoxy of the High Internet Gun Forum Priesthood. I expected better from you.

Barrett wrote an excellent book that showed no substantive anti-gun bias. Finally, someone writes a book about guns that’s accessible to non-gun owners and lays out the facts for them to make up their own minds. But you had to toss in some “anti” stuff that will turn off your readers to even consider looking at the book. I think most gun owners are intelligent people who can make their own decisions. Part of life is reading books and looking at ideas that you may or may not agree with.

However, the gun media is a pretty close community, and woe to the person who even strays from party orthodoxy one iota. They might lose their TV shows or be unable to publish in the gun rags. Yikes.